Introducing: Androsace

They are a Shanghai-based four piece founded just over a year ago with members hailing from Yunnan, Xinjiang, Italy and France.

They sound like a band who have spent plenty of time listening to Nirvana, Led Zep and Pearl Jam, not that there’s anything wrong with that. The band call their sound ‘minority grunge’ and lead singer Lenz, whose powerful vocals are one of the outstanding features of their music, says ‘we’re always going to keep it loud, dark and noisy’.

We say Androsace have been gigging regularly (often in some of the city’s less central venues) for over a year now and it’s given them a solid repertoire of songs. Their free CD, available this month at their live shows and for free download on their Douban site, is well worth getting your hands on.

They say ‘The CD sort of sums up our first year. We originally wanted to record better tracks for our Douban site then decided we could put out a free CD. It’s hard to describe the album with one name but we’ve called it Xiao Yang (Little Face) in Chinese – we are a new band so little face seems right; maybe next time we will have a bigger face!’ (Lenz, vocals).